


Survival and Hope

by SerStolas



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, F/M, First Meetings, Jyn as a Jedi, On the Run, Post-Order 66 (Star Wars), Post-Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-24 13:27:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30072927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SerStolas/pseuds/SerStolas
Summary: An AU where Jyn is a Jedi Knight who survived Order 66 only because she was on a mission to collect a new youngling for the Jedi Temple.  With the Jedi Order in ruins and a child depending on her, Jyn goes into hiding.  Two years later on Nar Shaddaa, she's tracked down by an unexpected ally in the form of Cassian Andor, a military specialist that works for the Organas of Alderaan, and his droid.
Relationships: Cassian Andor/Jyn Erso
Comments: 11
Kudos: 37





	Survival and Hope

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own Star Wars
> 
> Find me on Tumblr @SerStolas  
> Written by request and encouragement from the lovely castiellover77 on tumblr.

She checked the pockets of the oversized coat she wore, and the bag strapped to one thigh before she took the hand of the little boy curled up beside her and they filed off the transport. It had put a serious dent in their credits to reach Nar Shaddaa, and the Hutt controlled planet was perhaps the last place one might consider safe, but it would offer a easy place for them to get lost in, at least for a little while. Since Order 66 two years ago, Jyn Erso had learned that few places were safe for a former Jedi Knight and a force sensitive child for very long. 

Trax eyed the crowds at the spaceport warily and inched a little closer to Jyn as the two of them slipped the hoods of their coats up and made their way out of the spaceport, in search of a cheap place to sleep for the night and a little bit to fill their stomachs. 

“Kestrel,” the small black-haired bow whispered, tugging on the edge of her jacket. “I’m hungry.”

Jyn pulled him to one side of the walkway where they’d be out of the way for a few minutes and crouched down to meet his gaze. “Once we find somewhere to stay for the night, we’ll get dinner,” she promised him, in no small part relieved that Trax had gotten used to using her alias now. He remembered her real name, but over two years on the run he’d learned that it wasn’t safe to call her Jyn Erso anymore. 

She reached up and cupped his cheek as she spoke, wishing that she could comfort away that lurking fear she saw in his eyes most days. 

If you’d told her two years ago, she’d be on the run from the Empire’s hunters with a child depending on her for safety and teaching, she’d have laughed. 

She’d been a newly risen Jedi Knight before Order 66, fighting in only a few battles before the Jedi Counsel had sent her to Naboo to collect a young force sensitive child to bring him to the Temple for training. 

Jyn wondered sometimes if one of the Masters had sensed something when they’d sent her, giving her a lightly larger allotment than the normal credits and telling her to keep her ears open before she’d left the Temple.

She’d collected Trax from his family and headed for the spaceport before the news had spread across the galaxy that the Emperor had declared the Jedi to be traitors. Jyn and Trax’s saving grace had been a freighter pilot who still had some loyalties to the jedi, and suspicions of the Senate, who’d helped them hide for a few days and divested Jyn of most of what she owned that could identify her as a Jedi before taking them off planet and getting them to Ord Mantel. She and Trax had managed to survive on Ord Mantel with her working at a cantina for almost 11 months before they’d had to disappear again.

The only belonging that Jyn had kept had been her lightsaber, and that was always oh so carefully hidden in either their dwelling or among layers and layers of clothing when they were on the move. 

Trax had no family willing to claim in now, not after the purge, the freighter pilot, Scori Thif, had verified that before getting Jyn and Trax off planet. 

Jyn had never expected to be Trax’s guardian for more than a few days, but after Order 66, the four year old had no one else to rely on to keep him alive, so Jyn had become his “older sister,” taking a bit of time to impress upon him that he needed to tell people that they were related if he wanted to make sure he stayed with her and that the two of them remained safe.

Navigating the dizzying sectors and slums of Nar Shaddaa was a bit of a nightmare, but it had been the only ticket available for her and Trax when they’d needed to leave Dantooine at a price that Jyn could afford right now. She gave Trax the dried meat she’d managed to save on their journey on the transport while she searched for an appropriate hostel for the night. 

It took hours to find one in a sector where she knew they wouldn’t ask too many questions but that they also didn’t have to worry about someone trying to break into their room overnight. She carefully handed over the credits, got a recommendation on a food cart nearby in a gruff, sharp voice from the clerk, and was on her way. 

On a strange planet where they didn’t have any allies, Jyn didn’t want to leave Trax alone, so the two of them trooped down the gaudily lit street for some kind of meat and vegetables skewered on plasteel sticks, and then herded the tired Trax back to their room.

Trax finished half of his skewer before he was almost falling asleep sitting up and she tucked him into the small bed in the room and hoped what was left of dinner would be safe to eat in the morning, wrapping it in spare cloth before she slid to the floor beside the bed, bringing her knees to her chest.

Jyn wondered how many others might have survived, but it was too dangerous to look, not when she knew that the Emperor had people actively hunting down Jedi. There were days she thought about dropping her lightsaber down a garbage shoot so she had less on her that could track her as a Jedi, even if she’d purged anything else from her time as a Knight in those first few months after Order 66. Only an occasional tug from the Force, a sense that she might need it someday kept her from doing so.

She hoped that the rather dizzying and exhausted path she and Trax had taken helped confuse the presence she thought she’d caught following them earlier. For any normal adult, Nar Shaddaa offered a variety of places to disappear, and if it had been just Jyn, she could have easily found a way to vanish, particularly if she was willing to take a few risks.

With Trax depending on her, looking to her as his only family now, those were risks that she wasn’t willing to take. She’d never particularly thought of herself as a good person to mind a child. She’d worked with the younger younglings when she’d had to, but she’d never taken a particular interest them. She was certain one of the only reasons she’d originally been sent to collect Trax was that not many other Knights were available at the time that could be spared from the battlefield.

Jyn closed her eyes and stuffed her fist in her mouth as she felt the first tears streaming from her eyes and muffled her sobs so she wouldn’t wake Trax.

Jyn remembered the names of her parents, Galen and Lyra Erso, and she had memories when she was very young of her mother telling her stories of kyber and telling her the strongest hearts were made of kyber. She remembered her father building things with her in the evenings. As a force sensitive child, though, she’d been barely older than Trax when she’d picked him up when a visiting Jedi Master discovered her and insisting on taking her back to the Temple. She didn’t know if her parents were still alive, and even if they were, she hadn’t seen them in over a decade and a half and didn’t know if they’d be willing to harbor a fugitive Jedi.

The faces of her friends among the other Jedi Knights, the Masters, and some of the Younglings danced before her eyes as she cried, blurring her vision until her face was red, and she could barely see. 

She’d been 19 when Order 66 was carried out. At 21 now, she’d had little chance to let down any of her walls to cry and mourn for her lost friends and found family. She had a child depending on her and too much of her energy most days was spent trying to either make credits to keep them fed and housed or trying to keep the two of them safe.

She wiped her face with a sleeve and put the remains of her dinner with Trax’s. After a bit of water from her water bottle both to drink and rinse off her face, she let herself collapse onto the bed beside the sleeping boy, hoping that the morning might bring a small reprieve. 

****

After that first day she hadn’t sensed the presence again, and while she didn’t really allow herself to relax, she decided to make her and Trax disappear into the alleys of Nar Shaddaa for a little while. 

As small as Jyn was, most people didn’t expect her to know how to fight. A bouncer at one of the smaller cantinas had seen her take on a mugger by chance though and decided to give her a chance to make some credits. She didn’t know if it was the Force or a stroke of luck, but a couple of the other workers had kids, and she was able to leave Trax with a relative of one of the workers who watched some of the kids during her shifts. She’d been wary, and they hadn’t taken offense since that was normal for Nar Shaddaa, but her senses had told her she could trust these people, at least a little. They didn’t know she and Trax were force sensitive, and she’d impressed early on to Trax that they could not let other people know about their more unusual abilities.

She was thankful Trax was a relatively quiet child and seemed to have no desire to draw a lot of attention to himself.

Days melted into weeks, and she let herself get into a routine at the club acting as a guard. She saved credits where she could, knowing that she and Trax might have to make a sudden exit at any particular time, but the alleys and cantina of this sector of Nar Shaddaa didn’t appear to attract a lot of Imperials, but mostly just other residents of the city planet, workers from factories and establishments that sprung up to support them. 

She carried a baton with her in the streets and at the cantina, her light saber buried in a hidden spot in the room she rented for she and Trax. At least Jedi training had given her a good education on how to fight, and how to take a person down without killing them or seriously injuring them. Those skills, and the fact that she was small, and some patrons underestimated her, worked to her advantage and her boss’s happiness.

They’d been on the Hutt controlled planet for four and a half months before she sensed someone was looking for them again. She’d picked upon someone’s surface thoughts while out on the street one night, collecting dinner as she usually did for herself and Trax. The thoughts she picked up on though carried none of the malice that the usual Jedi hunters did, though.

It made her uneasy, but she didn’t know if she wanted to cut and run just yet. She would give it a few days, watch, and wait. She took different route to pick Trax up, though, and different routes to get the two of them home, just as a precaution. 

A newcomer appeared in the cantina one evening, drinking, and playing sabacc with a few of the factory workers. When she inquired to one of the other bouncers, she was told he was a freighter pilot delivering to one of the factories. They didn’t get a lot of pilots in this cantina, maybe one or two a month, but she took note of the man’s tall and lean build. She could tell from the roughness of his hands she saw as she passed the sabaac table that this was a man used to working. His brown eyes were sharp, observing the patrons and workers in the cantina, only occasionally seeming to flicker over her. 

Something about the newcomer made her a little uneasy though. Time, she thought, to find a new way to pick up Trax tonight, and yet another dizzying way home.

She made sure the man was occupied when she got off her shift and slipped out the back entrance of the cantina. She took the chance to grab a scarf and mid length coat she’d stashed in the back of the cantina a few days ago and slipped them on as she made her way through the alleyways to pick up her “brother.”

When she picked Trax up, she touched her forehead to his, speaking in a low tone only he would hear just before they slipped out his care giver’s home, letting him know they had to take a long way home tonight, but she would get him some of his favorite kabobs as a result. Trax could pick up on her caution, but he was excited at the prospect of the treat.

They stopped at a cart that was the opposite direction of home before she lead him through the streets, doubling back, and eventually picking the six year old up, though he was getting a bit too big for this, until she felt she might have truly lost anyone tailing her, she couldn’t sense anyone, and entered the hostel where they rented a room.

The room was dark when they entered, but she and Trax both immediately picked up on the fact that they weren’t alone as the door shut. Jyn snapped her baton out and Trax dove under their table as the lamp flickered on.

A tall black droid stood in front of the curtain they used to separate their bedroom from the rest of their home. When the droid made a move to grasp her, she threw him back against the wall with a clang, her eyes darting towards where she hid her lightsaber.

“Alright, calm down,” the voice of the pilot from the cantina broke suddenly.

Jyn immediately tossed herself in front of Trax and the table, holding her baton threateningly towards the man as he came through the curtain from their bedroom. “What do you want?” she demanded harshly.

“Believe it or not, we aren’t here from the Empire,” the man told her, taking in her defensive stance, her untrusting gaze. He moved his hands up where she could see them, leaving his pistol holstered. “Rather the opposite, actually.”

“Forgive me if I don’t so easily believe you,” she scowled at him. “Sneaking into our home doesn’t exactly make you trustworthy.”

The man sighed as he regarded her. “Look,” he said in a low tone, “I know what you are. You’ve been a hard one to track, but your kind to still have some allies in the galaxy, and one of them sent me to find you.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Who are you?”

“My name is Cassian Andor. I’m from Fest, originally, but I work for the Queen of Alderaan and her husband.”

Jyn turned her head slightly, measuring him. She couldn’t sense any hostility from him, or any malice. Finally, after a minute or so of debate and noting neither he nor the droid tried to disarm her, she slowly lowered the baton. 

“What do you want?”

“We are here to offer you shelter on Alderaan,” the droid answered the question. “Why you have done well over the past two years, in my estimation you and the child would only be able to continue to hide as you have for another two to three years before you are finally caught.”

Jyn snorted. “How is Alderaan any safer than Nar Shaddaa, or Ord Mantel for that matter?”

“Your name, Jyn Erso, was one of those given to Senator Organa by Master Kenobi before he went into hiding,” the droid replied.

“Kay…” Cassian rubbed his forehead. “Well, he isn’t wrong,” he added at Jyn’s frown. “Master Kenobi gave Senator Organa a small list of names of Jedi he thought might still be alive after Order 66 before he disappeared. Your name was on it, and the fact that you’d disappeared after going to collect a youngling. But the Organas have resources that you don’t, and Senator Organa has a certain loyalty to the old Jedi Order still. Moving from place to place is one way for you and the boy to stay alive, but eventually you run the risk of running out of credits or ending up somewhere that you can’t protect him.”

Trax had crawled partially out from under the table at this point as the adults spoke and demanded. “So, you’ll take me away from Kestrel? No, I want to stay with her!”

Cassian smiled a little and knelt to Trax’s level. “No, Trax. I’m offering to take you both to Alderaan. It will be easier to hide you there. The Princess needs companions as she grows, and the Queen is cautious on those she allows direct contact with her daughter right now. But Kestrel can hide there too, at least for a little while.”

Jyn watched Kay and Cassian, chewing on her lower lip for a moment and measuring this. She took a deep breath and knelt to address Trax herself, holding her arms out to him.

Trax through himself into her embrace as she spoke. “I might not be able to stay with you for more than a little while,” she told him. “But Cassian is right, you’d be safer on Alderaan, under the protection of a Queen and Senator, and the food might be a little better.”

“You have to stay with me, you promised!” Trax told her, burying his head in her neck.

“I think we can figure something out, Trax,” Cassian told him. He gave Jyn an appraising look. “The Queen can always use more bodyguards.”

Jyn’s lips formed a thin line for a moment, then finally, she nodded, picking Trax up and rising to her feet. 

“I don’t like this. And I don’t entirely trust you the way you came into our home, but…well, you don’t mean us harm, and”

“And the Force tells you so?” Cassian asked with minor humor.

“The Force doesn’t work like that,” she scowled faintly at him. “Just give us a little time to pack.”

“Take an hour or two. I have a ship at the space port we can leave on. Better to leave early in the morning, or very late at night.”

Jyn eyed him a long moment and then nodded. She carried Trax with her into their bedroom to pack.

“Just know, I will never forgive you if you hurt him,” she told Cassian as she passed.

“I promise you, Jyn Erso, I won’t,” Cassian replied. “I’m taking the two somewhere that you can call home.”


End file.
